1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a facsimile apparatus capable of receiving font data from an external apparatus and a control method therefor.
2. Related Background Art
Conventional facsimile apparatus is usually provided with messages to be displayed on a display unit such as an LCD (liquid crystal display) in the operation panel, and a font (set of characters of same size and style) to be used for various reports for example indicating the results of communication. Particularly in Europe and in the U.S., where the facsimile apparatus is required to cope with plural languages, fonts of plural languages are installed in the same apparatus for meeting such requirement.
Also in case an information processing apparatus effects image data transmission by sending character code data to a facsimile apparatus which converts such transmitted character code data into image data, such conversion to the image data has been achieved by the font provided in advance in the facsimile apparatus.
In order to avoid lack of the font data desired by the user in such case, the facsimile apparatus is often provided with plural font tables.
Such conventional facsimile apparatus designed for plural languages is provided therein with the fonts of plural languages, but such fonts contain only scarcely used characters and languages which are never used by the user. Such unused characters and languages and the memories therefor are considered to be wasted, but the installation of plural languages each including a plurality of characters is unavoidable since the language to be used cannot be predicted in advance.
With the recent penetration of the information processing apparatus such as personal computers, the document preparation is commonly done with such information processing apparatus. As a result, the facsimile apparatus is increasingly connected with the information processing apparatus through electrical communication means, for the purpose, for example, of transmitting document data on the information processing apparatus by direct conversion into a facsimile image. Also with the recent development in performance of the information processing apparatus, there are already made available those provided with fonts of high quality and also with rasterizing ability for converting such fonts into a bit map (raster data) matching the resolution of the display or the printer.
Such conventional configuration has been associated with a drawback of requiring a memory of a large capacity in order to prepare plural font tables in the apparatus, thus leading to an elevated production cost. Besides, in case of transferring font data, prepared independently by the user, to the facsimile apparatus for transmission of the corresponding image data, or in case of using font data, though not specific to the user but different from those provided in the facsimile apparatus in the language system, in style or in character size, the font tables provided in the facsimile apparatus are of no use.